LaTeX – Matthew Petroff https://mpetroff.net mpetroff.net Wed, 30 Nov 2016 02:06:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Automated Document Creation and Typesetting with LaTeX https://mpetroff.net/2015/06/automated-document-creation-and-typesetting-with-latex/ https://mpetroff.net/2015/06/automated-document-creation-and-typesetting-with-latex/#respond Tue, 30 Jun 2015 21:41:36 +0000 http://mpetroff.net/?p=1903 Continue reading →]]> Creating a new document class file and then using this class is usually considered the “correct” way to typeset a form or other document generated with data in \LaTeX. However, there’s also the quick-and-dirty method of creating a regular \LaTeX document every time in a script using some sort of string concatenation and then typesetting this, which also has its merits. When a class file is used, the class describes the document look and structure; a new \LaTeX document still needs to be created each time to define the data. Not writing a class file and placing the document look and structure typesetting code directly in the generation script isn’t as clean as the class method as it mixes styling with data, but it does make some things easier. The quick-and-dirty approach doesn’t require knowing the additional \LaTeX language features needed for creating a class, using only what would use in a normal document. In particular, it is useful for automatically generating documents that change in structure based on the input data or other more complicated logic. This can obviously all be implemented as a \LaTeX class since \TeX is a Turing-complete language, but general purpose scripting languages such as Python are easier to use for this, particularly since most programmers use them much more often than they create complicated \LaTeX classes. The quick-and-dirty approach trades the class method’s cleaner design for ease of script creation. However, if the form will ever be created by hand, the class method is definitely superior.

]]> https://mpetroff.net/2015/06/automated-document-creation-and-typesetting-with-latex/feed/ 0 Another Beamer Theme Matrix https://mpetroff.net/2014/11/another-beamer-theme-matrix/ https://mpetroff.net/2014/11/another-beamer-theme-matrix/#respond Sat, 29 Nov 2014 03:00:11 +0000 http://mpetroff.net/?p=1659 Continue reading →]]> The Beamer \LaTeX package for creating presentation slides has hundreds of styles available between all of the combinations of its included themes and color themes. Therefore, it is helpful to be able to look through all the possibilities in order to choose a style. A resource for this exists, the Beamer Theme Matrix; however, its load times lead much to be desired, particularly on a slower Internet connection. It uses two separate images for each combination, causing the browser to make over 800 requests to the server. This, combined with a page size of approximately 6.6MB, causes page load times in excess of 10 seconds on a fast connection and over a minute on a slow one. To remedy this, I created Another Beamer Theme Matrix. The page is less than 1MB and causes the browser to make fewer than 40 requests to the server, resulting in load times of under a second on a fast connection and under 10 seconds on a slow one, an order of magnitude improvement. This is accomplished by combining the thumbnails for each color theme of a particular theme into a single PNG sprite, which is then reduced to 8-bit color using pngquant and further optimized using OptiPNG. To further increase usability of the matrix, small bits of JavaScript were used to always keep the row and column labels visible, a lightbox was added for viewing the full-size previews, and a welcome and help screen was added that explains the matrix and how to use values from the matrix in a \LaTeX document.

Another Beamer Theme Matrix

Another Beamer Theme Matrix’s source code is available under an MIT license on GitHub. While inspired by the existing Beamer Theme Matrix, it is a complete rewrite in Python.

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